On wednesday we were given our two hours to actually animate our idea, which was of course the Tree we spent a few days last week building. We shot the animation backwards, gradually taking the tree apart to simulate growth when played backwards. It was hard to keep the movements consistent in rotations, and also to get everything done within the amount of time we had. I set up my SLR next to the video camera, so I could shoot my own version of the animation. There was a few mishaps along the way, but for what is essentially the first time I’ve tried something like this, I’m pretty happy with the results.

Next Wednesday we will be given two hours to create an animation lasting between 10 and 20 seconds. The theme for everyones animation is books, but you really have a lot of freedom with regard to how you use books, and the part they play in the idea.

Our idea is based around the Tree of Knowledge. Below is tree we’ve built, made from thousands of pieces of paper, all taken from different books, and threaded onto wire. The wire branches were then tied together along with the help of a glue gun to create the structure of a tree. Finally I added white plasticine to make it stand up, but also create the trunk and enhance the overall look of the tree. On some of the branches are little books. In the animation the tree will actually grow from the “Book of Knowledge”. Each of the books is another world, and as the show you what grows within the book of knowledge, we will then show you the world that grows in a book within a book….

This will take a while to load. Its a test animation of the tree spinning.

Along with the heavy snow falling this week came a brief from my teacher. It asked us to create a typographic design from snow. Of course a million ideas fill your head as you imagine the incredible sculptures you will now create, but when you get out into the cold wet snow, you realise its not as easy as you expected. In fact it turns out that sculpting anything from snow requires far more skill than I have. Feeling the disappointment along with my housemate Jon, we decide the best thing to do is work together. Going into the snow with a mate means you don’t give up so easily. In fact today, we spent the entire day creating our work. Last night was spent brainstorming, deciding on what we wanted to write with the snow, and the different ways we could do this. We came across a quote by Paul Gauguin which read “I shut my eyes in order to see”. We both loved it, and found that creating a series of images would allow us creation of more ideas.

The sentence was split into I shut / my eyes / in order / to see

I SHUT

Once the sun had gone down we set about creating “I Shut”. The first words of the sentence. We used the tops off our coffee and tea holders which are shaped like domes, using them to create perfectly rounded Hemispheres. We made dozens of these which were placed to created italic typography. This was perhaps the most beautiful thing we created all day, but the photo we got here simply doesn’t do it justice.

MY EYES

This piece was created by scraping snow off the ground. I didn’t want us to just get a stick and draw in the snow though, I wanted it on a different scale altogether. To begin with we used a trolley to draw the guidelines with. We then used the lid of a box to scrap the snow away. This technique took a huge amount of time, and was extremely hard work. With such little time to get the whole thing finished, I thought about what we could do to speed the process up. Turning the trolley upside down, I found the weight meant I could simply pull it along, and the snow would come with it.

This sped the process up massively. It was still hard work, but after an hour or two we were finished.

IN ORDER

The idea here was, to create the lettering using blocks. Almost like bricks of snow. We gathered up a bucket full of snow, and took it to the path where the snow had faded. The best thing about creating this piece was how so many people walking past asked about what we were creating. Many of them went off to see the other typography we had created around the common, a few even asking where they would be able to find the finished images. I loved creating work which was then left for anyone walking by to have a look at.

TO SEE

This was very simple, and the easiest of the 4 to make. We decided to create the letters on a pile of logs. Scraping the snow off two parts, then putting snow back to create each letter. I really love this setting, these were probably the most successful photographs of the day.

Back in June I photographed a Wedding for Beth and Ed Mordaunt. Its the first Wedding I’ve done, and I really enjoyed the experience. Thankfully Beth and Ed were both really pleased with the photographs I took for them. Photography is a big passion for me, and although I would never want to be a full time wedding photographer, I’m definitely interested in photographing more Weddings for people.

The Wedding has been featured in this months Wedding Ideas Magazine, and has a link to my website. The Wedding is shown over two double page spreads.

Firstly, I want to say a masive thanks to Joe Myers who helped me out MASSIVELY with this project. He’s the man you see in the photographs, and it was a great experience to work with him. Check his work out here.
He also makes dubstep which you can listen to here.

So today, I finally got my comic sans letters destroyed that I created yesterday… all 18 of them! The idea was simple, a man with a baseball bat smashes the crap out of the letters. We had a bit of a hiccup last night when we found out the place we were going to use to shoot the photographs, was in fact only usable at 3am in the morning. We ended up going to Hackney (thanks to Sophia) and after looking around for 15 minutes, found this disgusting, trashy alley way. The place was horrible, but it worked well for what I needed! We got to smashing the letters, and Overall I’m pretty happy with the whole thing. Whether thats cus I finally got it done, or because we made something good, I’m not completely sure yet. But heres a rough idea of what we did. Im going to re-colour them, and probably add and take away some of the photographs your not seeing here at some point tonight.